Monthly Archives: April 2012

Thanks for all those who’ve shared their experiences with us so far. We want to hear more. Have you used the plugin to help you select just the right font for a project? Did you discover a typeface you hadn’t even known existed? How has the tool made your design flow easier? Submit your story here by 11:59 PM (PDT) on Monday, April 30 and we’ll select our favorites to win a free download of the FontBook app for iPad.

Alright here’s the straight story: We here at FontShop have got too much to talk about and too little time in which to do it. We’ll hash these out in more detail in future newsletters and blog posts, but for now and in the meantime here are all the latest faces available on fontshop.com.

Back when FontFont split its library into tiers, most of the attention went to the Premium FontFonts, because they were the top selling, and the Free FontFonts, because, well, the price was right. In between these two the foundry placed a third tier called Collection FontFonts. The formats and package options of these exotic and hardworking faces were simplified, and the prices reduced. As a result, members of the Collection tier make up some of FontFont’s highest bang-per-buck families.

So we decided to pull out some of these and polish them up a bit, and make a series of it to run through May. After all, the rediscovery of fresh work that’s grown unfamiliar can be just as satisfying as coming across the new. From the FontFont Collection tier:

Whether the job is related to air transit or ticketed events, or either is only the lens through which your brief takes its cues, these two families offer both pattern and texture to your visual vocabulary.

Did you download the FontShop Plugin yet? Well here are some tips to help you use it in Adobe Photoshop CS5. I’ll go over two features to assist you in finding similar fonts and how you can use tags to help you compare typefaces in a single document.

First choose a typeface, for this example I’ve picked FF Tisa OT Bold Italic. Then click on the find similar icon which is highlighted in the image below.

You should get a list of similar fonts.

Add tags to the typefaces that you want to try out. If you want to string a few words together then use an underscore instead of spaces like in my example.

I know it’s hard to choose just one, but tagging multiples is as easy as clicking a few buttons.

Now you have a mini collection of similar fonts tagged in your Favorites section.

Once you’re ready to use the fonts then you can click on the tag and you’ll see a list that you can use to create multiple preview layers within a single document.

Please note that every time you create a preview, the visible text layer is turned off. So just turn on the text layer you want on to create a new preview layer. All preview layers are labeled with the name of the typeface that is being rendered.

Hey, it’s Staff Picks time again; Our chance to pull out the new and dust off the old and tell you why we love all these clever, stately, familiar and unconventional faces. Here’s the whole list, and three in a bit more depth.

“I love Alda’s Bold Italic, especially in large sizes, with its distinct flat edges. Strong and sturdy, but still elegant—a font that a football player could use in a note asking his high school sweetheart to prom.”

March brought us a great selection of new faces to look through. Let’s get into a few of them in detail, and if you’re still left wanting, see the complete list for all the March additions.

Braga by Dino dos Santos and Pedro Leal explores ornamentation through pattern, adhering tightly to a set of concrete visual constraints. Limitless variation in color and composition results when the design’s 24 interrelated fonts work together to create layered artwork.

Hernandez by Daniel Hernandez sticks with tradition just enough to keep it interesting. The resultant heavy slab serif bounces along, its curves reinforced by deep cuts into the lettershapes.

User Stencil by Pedro Leal adds to the User family a useful face for display work. One interesting characteristic of the User family is its common character widths across weights, even in its reversed ‘Cameo’ variants.

During TYPO last week, Erik Spiekermann, along with conference organizers Meghan Arnold and Michael Pieracci announced something new to change the way designers select and use fonts. With the new FontShop plugin you can try any of the fonts in our library without ever leaving Photoshop, and once you’re ready to buy, the plugin makes it easy.

To download the plugin, visit the FontShop Plugin page on our website and follow the instructions. Note that the plugin is for CS 5 and later, and if your computer’s operating system is OSX Lion, you’ll likely need to update your Adobe Extension Manager. Details are on the site.

After opening the downloaded file, Adobe Extension Manager should handle the installation for you. Start up or restart Photoshop and select ‘FontShop’ under the ‘Window » Extensions’ menu up top.

To see the plugin in action, just open a file with a visible text layer in it, make sure no text is selected, and click on ‘Preview’ under one of the fonts displayed.

The text is displayed in the new font. Scroll down with the down arrows, and search or browse categories to see more selections. To try a different font, make sure the original text layer is visible again, and repeat.

The plugin is still in beta, so please, let us know what’s not working for you, what is, etc.. We appreciate your voice in making the plugin a valuable tool for putting great fonts into the hands of great designers.

The FontBook team has just given us word that FontBook 2.1 is up for sale in the App Store. FontBook 2.1 takes full advantage of the new iPad’s beautiful Retina display, with double the resolution and four times the pixel density of iPad 2. The new iPad’s brilliant, high-contrast display becomes a suitable substrate upon which FontBook’s specimens reveal the character of their faces. At its high resolution, even type samples set at text sizes approach the crispness of the printed page.

Find FontBook 2.1 for the new iPad at the App Store, or learn more about it at fontbook.com.

Adrian Frutiger’s warm, humanist sans of the same name handily takes the championship title. The wayfinding face grew to set text beautifully, and like all other greats, became the subject of great imitation. You can read more about Adrian in Erik Spiekermann’s recent FontFeed post.

Congratulations to Frutiger and thanks to all whose participation made possible our March Madness Faceoff.